Austel unveils another enchanting gem with "Lost At Home"
Following the haunting power of debut single "Crows", Austel returns with another spine-tingling number that further exemplifies her talent for creating expansive soundscapes from sparse textures, relying on the purity of the emotion within to tell her story.
Austel is the moniker for classically-trained musician Annie Rew Shaw, an artist who is able to capture your imagination through layers of electronica and piano-led melodies. Her newest effort seems deceptively simple, but dig a little deeper and it becomes apparent that this is a well thought-out song where every note is placed for ultimate impact.
There's a deep sense of melancholy that floats through "Lost At Home" as it sees Austel deal with the realisation that the place she has tried to make her home may not be what she thought it was. It sees her battle with the isolation of the strangeness that befalls the streets she has known for so long, as she laments "This is not where I belong anymore".
It would have been so easy for this song to be something of a standard ballad, but the real interest comes in the interjecting, almost sci-fi sounding, electronic sounds that only heighten the sense of atmosphere before Austel repeatedly cries out "How could you let me go?"
Explaining the meaning behind the song, Austel says "'Lost At Home' is about the uncomfortable, hard-to-swallow realisation that somewhere you’ve tried so hard to convince yourself is where you belong is actually wrong, and you’re compromising a huge part of yourself to be there. Suddenly feeling disconnected from a place you’ve known for years... whether that’s in a room, a city, a crowd of strangers or a group of friends; that aching undertone of isolation becomes hard to ignore."
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